Paintings Stolen From Veterans Home In South Boston
BOSTON (CBS) – Police are looking for paintings that were stolen from a veterans home in South Boston.
"How would they do that? Why would somebody want to do that?" Mark McKunes asked.
Like everyone else at Patriot Homes in South Boston, Mark McKunes is a veteran. When the hallway walls there were suddenly blank, the property manager checked surveillance video.
"You see a woman come in at an angle, the pictures are on the first floor, she grabs them and goes right up the stairs and 40 seconds later walks back down with the third photo and walked right out the door," he said.
McKunes says the Sunday night video shows a woman come into the back door of the building on Athens Street and take two paintings off the wall on the first floor. Then, she goes upstairs and comes down with a third painting before she leaves.
McKunes joined the Air Force at 19-years-old and wanted nothing more than to call South Boston home again.
Appreciating every finishing detail of that dream including those three paintings.
"These artists donated the time to make these for us and donated them to us so we have something beautiful on the walls to look at and this person comes in and takes away the safety of the building and the beautiful art donated to us," he said.
Some of these veterans believe the woman knew exactly what she was looking for when she walked in one of these doors.
"So quickly too and without any fear it looks like she was just in and out and she knew what she was doing," he said.
The building is home to several families and while some of them can't help but feel violated, they are thankful the woman didn't make her way into anyone's unit.
"The fact that somebody has enough audacity I guess that is the word to use to break into somebody's home and steal somebody's property is breathtaking, scary," he said.
The hope is that catching it on surveillance video will stop the woman from doing it again.
"Hopefully we can get them back if not this person be arrested and we can show we are not going to let someone just break into our neighborhood and our house," he explained.
